“But just look, sir, I have no wireless!” “Yes, I quite see. All you hookers are alike! Well, come along, follow me. How much coal have you?” “Fifteen hundred tons.” “Good! You are to coal the cruiser _Lamartine_, there behind the point.” “Yes, but the top of my hold has briquettes for torpedo-boats!” This did nothing to soothe the commander’s feelings. He reflected awhile and then swore. “Well, so much the worse. The _Lamartine_ has been waiting since yesterday and she has to sail north to-day. She’ll take your briquettes and to-morrow you can give your lump coal to some other ship.” “All right,” said Fourgues. And off we go to hail _Lamartine_ which was waiting below the promontory, drifting without having cast even the smallest anchor. At a thousand yards they made us stop because an officer from the ship was coming aboard in a launch to help us to handle her. They might just as well have kept him. We have only one screw, not three like a cruiser, and the _Pamir_, with three thousand tons in her hold, won’t turn like a teetotum. The officer wanted to show us what to do. Fourgues began by cursing aloud and then bethought himself that in time of war the Merchant Service must contain itself. When he saw that the damage would not be serious, he let the officer go ahead. “Go ahead! Astern! Hard a-starboard! But your ship doesn’t answer the helm! She’s broadside on! Astern! Astern! My God--” _Bump!_ You bet she stopped, the old _Pamir_! It was lucky the _Lamartine_ was armoured! Otherwise we should have walked right into her as far as the steps of the masts! Anyway, we rammed her. We broke the two first hawsers, new steel ones, and we scraped her a little. Ah, oh, my! what gadgets you do have sticking out all over your ships--turrets, guns, catheads, bridges! The _Pamir_ took the whole bump with her starboard lifeboat which tumbled between us and cracked like a nut. This deadened the shock somewhat, but our davits were twisted and we can’t hang another lifeboat up there in a hurry. The cruiser began to load her coal at seven in the morning and by three in the afternoon, including the lunch interval, had swallowed her thousand tons, briquettes first, lumps next. How the crew did it I can’t think. Some crew, eh? Just think, they had been thirty days at sea and yet they grubbed that out in seven hours! If you have that kind on the _Auvergne_ you can be proud of them. What I want to know is if your naval constructors spend their time trying to make it more difficult for the coal to be taken aboard? They certainly never could have handled briquettes themselves or they would not have made it necessary to go about it as if one were trying to get furniture into a house through the chimney. I tried to follow the course of a load of coal from the hold of the _Pamir_ into the hold of the _Lamartine_, but it was like trying to find the exit of the maze at the Crystal Palace--only there it was dirtier!